


Nekomancer

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Demonstuck [46]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: ;0), Demonstuck, Gen, Mention of Past Suicide Attempt, Necromancy, embedded art, look if you follow this series you probably know sollux has had some issues okay, pssst i suggest you open the art in a new tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 14:01:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19297204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: The safehouse may be safe for Sollux, but that doesn't mean it's comfortable. However, one of the newer members of the Strider family has a solution that's unique to them.





	Nekomancer

**Author's Note:**

> I actually did [art](https://knight-of-heart-and-art.tumblr.com/post/185686887301/b33-click-for-a-surprisemore) for this myself are y'all proud of me

Fuck. You're getting a headache.

That's actually pretty fucking par for the course of your life, though. Hearing the voices of the dead, seeing the shades they've left behind—that's a massive headache just _waiting_ to happen. Well, it's not, really, because in your experience headaches don't fucking _wait,_ they just settle in somewhere between opening your eyes and forcing yourself to roll out of bed to join ED and FF in the kitchen (or the shower, if you're lucky) and take up permanent fucking residence in the space between your mismatched eyes and the back of your head.

Sometimes you wonder if it'd be worth it to do an impromptu removal of that troublesome space. Thankfully, you usually remember that you've already done that, repeatedly, and that it is very fucking rarely worth it.

 _Here_ is not the place to even think about it, either, because this isn't somewhere that your sad carcass would just lay in a heap until your "gift" kicked in and repaired the mess you'd made. Nope, this is a fucking _safehouse_ , run by fucking _hunters_ , and why are you sitting at a table with a shitton more knife scars than FF would allow on any piece of furniture in any house the three of you inhabit? Also, would it hurt to faceplant on the marked-up surface?

Yes. Yes it does hurt, but you're already down and it doesn't hurt much more than just sitting here like a sack of shit. Is it an improvement? No, not really. Are you going to get up? Also no.

Fuck, you wish FF would hurry the fuck up and finish her argument with the lepidopteran. There's too many voices here...the shadows you can make a choice to not look at, but the voices. The _voices._ You can't help but listen to the voices.

Listening to the voices of the recently/soon to be/not quite deceased is always a bad idea, but then again you've never been a goddamn Einstein. At least here it's just...screaming, mostly. Ghosts too angry or too confused to articulate shit. What the fuck are they angry about? They're _dead,_ it's not like—

( _They know whose place this is. They know they know they know._ We _know.)_

...right. This is a hunters' house. Of fucking course.

You need to get the flying fuck out of here. Fuck Feferi, she'll find you later wherever you wind up, you need to be fucking moving _right now right now right fucking now_ —

Yeah you're not even going to sit up are you. Shit.

Someone clears their throat, unsettlingly close to your ear, and you find that you can, in fact, sit up, assuming that somebody else provides the necessary impetus. The little redheaded kid stumbles back a step as you instinctively lash out at the possible threat with your psionics, but he doesn't—wait, no, you know which kid that is if you think about it, you'll come up with a name in a sec but you know the right word is _they,_ not _he_ —they don't lose the curious look. Shit, they even reach for the reddish sparks whirling around them before you catch yourself and stop fuckin' shoving.

"What." Wait, no, that's more mean than you're prepared to be to a kid. "Okay, thorry, I'm having thome—"

The kid—Jr, there you go, there's the name—holds out their hands, firing off a rapid series of signs that you're vaguely aware you should be able to translate. Unfortunately, your head hurts too damn much for that, and as hard as you try to concentrate, you don't get any real meaning from it.

"Shit." That's it, you're putting your head back on the table. It doesn't help at all. "Theriouthly, Jr, I can't underthand you right now, okay? I—"

The chatter of voices that only you can hear surges loud enough that you miss the rest of your own sentence. Or maybe you don't say it at all—you're sensitive as shit to sound, and the uptick in volume is an icepick buried in an ocular nerve, diligently trying to wedge your eye out of your skull. Holy _shit_ , holy fucking shit, you know from experience that pain alone can't kill you but you wish, you fucking wish, you wish it _would_ —

"E _nough_! Shut the furrick up and _leave him alone_!"

The shrieked demand is as loud as the screaming dead, which is kind of an anomaly in and of itself—they're not actually _audible_ , and you've found that it's pretty fucking hard to drown out your own thoughts—but even weirder is the fact that the voices take it as an actual fucking command, and do exactly as ordered.

They shut the furrick up.

Holy fucking shit. You can't remember the last time it was this _quiet_. For a couple minutes, you lose your awareness of yourself, your surroundings, everything but the ringing in your ears that's simply the absence of any aural input. The _quiet._

Then someone pats your shoulder, soft and quick like they're worried about touching you, and you realize that you're curled over the table with your hands over your ears. The latter is easy enough to rectify, the former...not so much. You need another minute to sit here with your scarred forehead pressed against the equally scarred tabletop, listening to the rasp of your own breath. (Dear fucking shit you sound a little bit like you're dying.)

"Let 'im be fur another sec, Jr," the same voice that ordered the voices of the dead into silence says, and the hand stops patting at your shoulder.

There's quiet again.

You know enough about kids to know that that's probably not as great a thing as it feels like. Time to take a deep breath and straighten up, you guess.

Jr and the unfamiliar kid may be silent, but they're not speechless right now; you're not even going to try to decipher whatever the hell they're signing back and forth to each other. Your headache is already ebbing away, but both of the kids are obviously as used to their slightly tweaked version of ASL as they are to spoken language; the only time you've seen anyone's hands move that fast was watching Eridan reload in a real combat situation. Anyway, you can always catch up on anything important in a minute—you're more interested in the kid who can command the dead.

The first word that comes to mind is _colorful_ —everything about them is orange and green, from the tips of their curly hair (that would be orange, although the fur on their feline ears blends in seamlessly with their roots) to their too-long cargo pants (dark green, cut in a style that makes you wonder if they got them directly from a GI-surplus website even though the fabric isn't camo.) The second word is _Strider_ —it's the shades perched on top of their head and the bright, attentive eyes as much as anything else. Those same eyes give you the hint that they're not _just_ Strider blood, though: nothing human has that kind of sectoral heterochromia, orange and emerald swirled together until you have to blink to convince yourself that the colors aren't really moving.

When you blink you see the ghosts. The dead, wrapped around this colorful preteen like a cloak of shadows, blurring the stellar print on their shirt. This isn't a matter of your seeing shit that's happened or shit that's yet to come, this kid's fucking— _attracting_ every shade in the room to them somehow.

You've never seen anything like this before. It's pretty much robbed you of your ability to do anything other than stare at them like a dumbass right now.

They stare right back, reaching up to brush a shadow back from their face. (It takes you a moment to realize how fucking weird that is.) "Better?"

"That'th, uh. Yeah, it'th better." Shit. "What the hell are you?"

That's rude. The kid doesn't seem to be bothered by it. "Davepeta."

"Thoundth like a _who,_ not a _what._ "

"Good point! I'm a chimera." They give you a bright grin. Their teeth, thankfully, are not either orange or green, but white. And feline. And needle-sharp. As you're processing that, Davepeta rolls their shoulders and half-spreads a pair of wings that _aren't_ white; the spiral of the dead swirling around them shifts around the green-tipped orange feathers, returning to the previous route as the chimera folds their wings down again. "See?"

"I thee, yeah." But that's still not all that helpful. "Thinthe when do chimeras order ghothtth around?"

"Oh, most of them don't." Davepeta shrugs again, looking away from you as Jr taps their arm and starts signing again. "That'd be because of the necromancer thing."

"The _what._ " Hunters don't keep necromancers. Even the _Striders_ don't keep necromancers. That's fucking batshit.

"The necromancer thing? Mostly I don't use it. Stupid-ass power to give to a purresumably tame weapon, if you ask me, but they wanted to cover all their bases I guess?" Davepeta nods at Jr, signs a couple quick phrases, and looks back up at you. "Jr says they've been watching you for ten minutes."

You know a change of subject when you see one. But. "'They' gave you powerth. Necromanthy. Who the fuck ith 'they?'" _Davepeta._ Dave and... "Oh fuck. _Dith?_ Dithiple Lejion?"

"She's kind of my mom, but she didn't do this." They wave a dismissive hand to indicate that by _this,_ they mean themself. "Everyone responsible for making me is dead."

The casual way Davepeta says that is fucking _terrifying,_ coming from a lanky furry angel kid. "Shit."

"Hey, fuck with my family and you get the claws. Now come on, let's find you some painkillers."

* * *

By "painkillers," they mean headache meds, the kind that usually don't do a fucking thing for you. You take them anyway, and this time isn't like usual; the migraine just evaporates back to wherever shitty neurological symptoms go, leaving you to spend your time in a more productive manner.

Feferi find you half an hour later in a pile of blankets and pillows tumbled into closet that's had the door removed to make it a nap room, mostly asleep under the weight of five warm and sleepy children. Look, you said you _could_ spend your time productively, not that you did. Then again, the delighted way she grins make you think the last half hour was pretty damn useful—it made you feel better, it made her happy.

She opens her mouth, and you cut her off before she can even start. "We're not in a hurry, right? Thtaying here a while longer ith _totally_ on the agenda for today, right?"

"Oh my god, Sol." Ah, she's almost laughing, you can hear it even with how low she's keeping her voice. "I thought you didn't like kids?"

"Fuck off, I can change my mind." And, as she opens her mouth, " _No,_ that doethn't mean we're having one until you talk ED into it too."

"How about we borrow one of these? You know I could talk D into it."

...hm. "Do it without the thiren shit, and you've got a deal."

FF giggles, clapping her hands twice before leaning in to brush your hair back from your face. "So you want to sleep here for a while?"

"That'th _ecthactly_ what I want."

"Mhm. I'll come pick you up in a couple hours."

"Thanks, FF."

"No problem, Sol. Love you."

"Love you too."

She rises to her feet and turns away, and you settle more comfortably under Liv's weight, let Davesprite's soft orange wing brush down over your face, and close your eyes. If the sleep you get is as deep as the silence in your head, this is going to start being a regular thing.

You could get used to that.

 


End file.
